Trick of the Light
by ncfan
Summary: For one moment, she thinks she sees him.


I own nothing.

* * *

Galadriel has no never and will never understand just what the neri are getting so worked up over as regards to childbirth. If she was an adaneth, she might understand, considering that Edain women died in childbirth with alarming regularity. But she is an Elda, not an adaneth. There is pain in childbirth, as there must be, but very rarely do the nissi of the Eldar die in childbirth.

And yet, everyone makes such a big to-do over it. Celebrimbor could not hide his worry. Celeborn tried but was not very much able to hide his own concern, even if Galadriel did not see fit to point it out to him. And wherever she goes in the settlement beside the shores of Nenuial, the Edhil ask after her health. Not just the neri, but the nissi as well. _So this unfounded fear has consumed them all, _she muses, amused and sour all at once.

"And to think that you would be the cause of so much worry, my quiet girl," she calls across the room to the tiny infant in the bassinet.

Celeborn named their child Celebrían the moment he caught sight of the silver fuzz upon her head. 'Silver Queen.' It's a fitting name for her, and Galadriel has never had cause to doubt Celeborn's naming abilities. But when she has determined a fitting name for her, Galadriel will give her daughter a Quenya name as well. She does not care if that offends the Sindar in the settlement. She does not care if Celebrían never uses it. But she will give her a name in the tongue of her people. She will not see her daughter grow without connection to absent kin.

Absent kin…

The room seems awfully empty, all of a sudden.

When Galadriel and her brothers were born, they were surrounded by their kin. Parents, grandparents, older siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins from both sides of the family, they were all there. A birth was a joyous occasion attended by every relative there was to be had. It was the same for Finduilas when she was born in Beleriand. Galadriel and Lúthien had ridden to Minas Tirith to congratulate Orodreth and his wife, to see the golden-haired girl that had been born to them. If Gil-Galad's birth did not have the same following, well the family was already dropping like flies by the time he was born, and he was well-loved all the same.

However, Galadriel's family is either dead or living on the other side of the sea. It is the same for Celeborn's. If there was anything she would have liked, it would have been to have at least some of her kin beside her while she was giving birth. Her mother, Aredhel, Lúthien, Melian; just having one of them there would have been enough. She hadn't really wanted Celeborn there; it just isn't done among the Noldor for a nís's husband to be in the same room as she was giving birth, and Celeborn respected that, as much as he didn't like it when she told him. But one of her own kin…

No. That will not happen. Her kin are all either dead, or never left Aman to start with. They could not be here with her, and there is in Galadriel's mind no way they could even know of Celebrían's birth.

She will do her best to ensure that her daughter does not grow to adulthood with no knowledge at all of her mother's people and way of life (And Galadriel does not like to think of what would have happened had Celebrían been born in Menegroth and not by the shores of Nenuial). Celebrían will not grow up ignorant of the Noldor. However, as much as Galadriel does not wish it so, her daughter will never know her kin, and they will never know her.

Galadriel has no intent of sailing over the sea, however much she might miss her family. She has no intention of forcing her daughter to sail, or forcing Celeborn to sail, or leaving either one of them behind. She does not wish to go back to her stifled life in Aman, not yet. The time when her longing for home is so great and her weariness so burdensome that she can accept a claustrophobic life again has not come. Not yet.

All the same, it saddens her, the idea that Celebrían will never know most of her own kin, unless the day comes when she sails herself, or the day comes when the world breaks and they are all reunited in whatever awaits the Edhil beyond the breaking of the world. Celebrían will never know them, and they will never know her. As much as Galadriel wishes for her daughter not to grow up ignorant of her heritage, there will always be a large part of that heritage missing from her life.

And Galadriel's.

_I would not trade my life here for anything that could be offered to me. I would not trade it for lost kin returned to me, for sunken lands raised from the depths, for the Two Trees rekindled and shining in all glory again. It is for no one to turn back the world to the past, and I fear that I would lose something of myself if I tried to._

_What was it that Melian said?_

_There is nothing to be gained by drowning yourself in specters of the past. Once you have forgiven the wrongs others have done to you, and made sense of your own mistakes and misdeeds, it is time to put the past away, child._

_And yet, even Melian in all her wisdom could not teach me how to banish it entirely._

Galadriel turns her gaze towards the bassinet, and pauses, her throat dry, to see someone standing over it.

Insubstantial he is, standing in a patch of sunlight and looking more light than substance himself. A long sheet of loose gold hair obscures the stranger's hair as he leans over Celebrían and fusses over her the way Galadriel remembers Lúthien fussing over Finduilas in her cradle. Smiling and wistful as she let the baby latch on to a lock of her long black hair.

It lasts just a moment, but the nér looks up at her. Finrod looks at her, and he smiles. Then, a cloud passes over the Sun, and he is gone.

Galadriel is left leaning down over her child, still fast asleep, and wondering tiredly what it is that she has seen, and what it is supposed to mean.

* * *

Neri—men (singular: nér)  
Nissi—women (singular: nís)  
Elda—an Elf from one of the Three Kindreds who went to Aman (the Sindar are included as well) (plural: Eldar)  
Adaneth—a woman of the Edain  
Edain—the Men from the three houses that fought alongside the Valar in the War of Wrath (singular: Adan)  
Edhil—Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)


End file.
